The
Unfolding Human Catastrophe in Iran
Sanctions imposed on Iran's banks and financial institutions
could lead to a humanitarian crisis.

By Muhammad Sahimi & Eskandar
Sadeghi-Boroujerdi

October 30, 2012 "Al
Jazeera"
-- During
their debate about foreign policy last Monday, President Barack
Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney both agreed that
the crippling unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the the
United States and its allies must continue, until the Islamic
Republic recalibrates its nuclear ambitions.

Both seem
to have also adopted Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's
favoured refrain that "Iran must not be allowed to acquire a
nuclear capability" and that such a capability constitutes a
"red line" not to be crossed at any cost. Previously the
inveterate refrain had been "Iran must not be allowed to acquire
a nuclear weapon".

The
definition of "capability" has continued to remain vague and
ill-defined, and a number of analysts have concluded that the
Islamic Republic is already nuclear capable and has all the
necessary components it would need in order to assemble a bomb
if it so desired. Once a country has mastered enrichment
technology it is generally accepted that the decision to
weaponise largely becomes a political one.

Both
Israeli and American intelligence continue to hold that Iran has
not yet taken any such a decision. A crucial caveat is of course
is that as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
with all its enrichment sites subject to IAEA inspections, if it
desired to make a dash for the bomb, Iran would have to withdraw
from the NPT. An act that would immediately raise alarm bells
across the world and most likely provoke a rapid Western
military response.

Apart from
the vague and shifting red lines which continue to afflict the
thick fog of Western national security rhetoric vis-a-vis Iran,
not a single word was uttered by either men about the plight and
suffering of the Iranian people who have had no role in the
decisions made by the Islamic Republic's leaders. But, the fact
is that the sanctions, exacerbated by government incompetence,
have the potential to give rise to a major human catastrophe.

'Smart' and 'targeted'

The lack
of sensitivity to the plight of ordinary Iranians was - at least
on the President's part - surprising, because when his
administration together with the European Union began imposing
sanctions on Iran, they promised the world that the sanctions
will be "smart" and "targeted". The world was promised that the
sanctions will not hurt millions of ordinary Iranians who
go about their daily lives and, in fact, oppose many of their
government's policies.

But, the
sanctions are now in full force, and are hurting the same people
who we were told were not meant to be their target, in what is
yet another case of "collateral damage" inflicted by Western
policy towards Iran, and its disenfranchised people who have
lost control over their destiny at both home and abroad. In
fact, there are very strong indications that a human catastrophe
could emerge whose scale poses as much a threat as an outright
military attack.

The
supposedly "smart" and "targeted" sanctions have been
increasingly expanded to all areas, even if they are not part of
the official sphere of sanctions. This is intentional, even if
Western leaders tell us otherwise. To avoid criticisms of the
type that they were confronted with after they imposed
all-encompassing sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, the US and its
EU allies have imposed sanctions on Iran's Central Bank and
practically all other Iranian banks that are involved in
commercial transactions with the outside world. Since these
banks open lines of credit for imports, and provide financial
guarantees for commerce with the outside world, it has become
very difficult, if not impossible, to import vital goods
and products into the country, even those that absolutely have
nothing to do with the military, or oil, or the nuclear
programme. In effect, this is the type of sanctions imposed on
Iraq, but in a supposedly more "humanitarian" way.

An area
that has been hit very hard is the pharmaceutical sector.
Although Iran produces a large part of the medicines and drugs
that its population needs, based on the generic versions
of brand-named pharmaceuticals, it is still unable to produce
the most advanced drugs that have come to the market over the
past 10 to 15 years that deal with a variety of serious
illnesses, simply because their generic versions are not yet
available. As a result, Iran must still import a significant
amount of drugs every year to address the needs of the Iranian
people when dealing with such illnesses as leukaemia, AIDS, and
others.

Sanctions on banks

But, the
sanctions imposed on Iran's banks and financial institutions
have effectively prevented Iran from importing the necessary
drugs and the associated chemicals. At the same time, as Iran's
oil exports continue to decrease due to the sanctions strain on
the country’s resources, it becomes increasingly difficult to
pay for the expensive imported drugs, even if a way can be found
for importing them. As a pharmacist in Tehran said, "The
warehouses for pharmaceutics are empty because we cannot import
what we need due to the sanctions, and even if we could, we do
not have the resources to pay for them due to the sanctions."

As a
result, the shortage of drugs has all the makings of a human
catastrophe. According to recent estimates as many as 6 million
patients are currently being affected by the
impact of sanctions on the import and manufacture of
medications inside Iran.

This has
prompted many of Iran's healthcare professionals to raise their
voices, and begin protesting the impending danger they're
witnessing before their eyes. The board of directors of the
Iranian Haemophilia Society recently informed the World
Federation of Haemophilia (IFH) that the lives of tens
of thousands of children are being endangered by the lack of
proper drugs as a consequence of international economic
sanctions imposed on Iran.

According
to the letter that the Society's board sent to the IFH, while
the export of drugs to Iran has not been banned, the sanctions
imposed on the Central Bank of Iran and the country's other
financial institutions have severely disrupted the purchase and
transfer of medicines. Describing itself as a non-political
organisation that has been active for 45 years, the Society
condemned [FA] the "inhumane and immoral" US and EU
sanctions and appealed to international organisations for help.

No
drugs to treat illnesses

Some
statistics are very telling. Tens of thousands of Iranian boys
and young men are haemophilic and need certain drugs that must
be imported. Many of them may need surgery for a variety of
reasons, but in the absence of proper drugs for their
haemophilia illness, the surgeries cannot be performed, because
the bleeding could not be stopped.

Several
credible reports from Iran indicate that surgeries for all
haemophilic patients have been cancelled, and at least a
few have already died.There are about 37,000 Iranians with MS, a
debilitating disease that can be controlled only with
advanced medications; otherwise, the patients will die. In fact,
three members of one of our extended families in Iran are
afflicted with multiple sclerosis.Furthermore,
given that even under the best medical conditions 40,000
Iranians lose their lives to cancer every year, and that it has
been predicted by many medical experts that Iran will have a
"cancer tsunami" by 2015 as every year 70,000 to 80,000 new
cases of cancer are identified in Iran, the gravity of
the situation becomes even more perilous.

Fatemeh
Hashemi, head of Iran's Charity Foundation for Special
Diseases, which cares for the needs of patients with
life-threatening diseases, including a variety of cancers in
adult patients as well as children, heart diseases, lung
problems, multiple sclerosis (MS), and thalassemia, recently
wrote a letter to United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The Foundation has been a highly successful nonpolitical
organisation that, in addition to Iran, has also served many
people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose work has been
recognised by the UN.

In her letter Hashemi said that she leads an organisation "with
6 million patients and, hence, in contact with 30 per cent of
Iran's total population". Emphasising the non-political nature
of her organisation and her letter, Hashemi added:

"Although drugs have not been sanctioned, due to
the impossibility of paying for the imported drugs through
the banking system, the heavy shadow of the sanctions is
felt in the health sector. Not only has importing drugs been
disrupted, importing the raw chemicals [for the drugs
that Iran does produce] has also been disrupted... As a
human activist, I call on humanity's conscience to pay
attention to the fact that, despite the claims by those that
have imposed the sanctions, their pressure is having
its destructive effect on the life and health of the
people."

Hence, the
supposedly "smart" and "targeted" sanctions that were not going
to hurt the ordinary Iranians have been inflicting significant
damage on the Iranian people.

The net
result is that shortage of drugs for patients with serious and
life-threatening illnesses is becoming chronic in Iran, and is
reaching hazardous levels.

Shortage of drugs

Meanwhile,
recent reports indicate that two large plants that produce
drugs for a variety of illnesses have also been closed. The
reason is that it has become essentially impossible to import
the chemical compounds used in the production of the drugs, due
to the sanctions imposed on Iran's financial institutions that
deal with the outside world.

The world
must recognise that in certain respects the path taken by the
United States and its allies is eerily similar to what was done
to Iraq in the 1990s. The United Nation's UNICEF estimated that
the sanctions imposed on Iraq caused the death of up to 500,000
Iraqi children. Given that Iran's population is three times that
of Iraq, if the sanctions imposed on Iran last several years -
as they did with Iraq - the number of dead resulting from them
could be larger than that of Iraq.

Moreover,
given that Iran still imports a significant amount of wheat,
rice and other food products, if the sanctions drag on, not only
could hundreds of thousands of Iranians die due to shortage of
drugs and medical goods, the shortage of food could also become
very significant. It should also be noted, if only in passing,
that sanctions did not change the policy of Saddam Hussein's
regime.

Thus,
after causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
children, those who had been jockeying for war with Iraq all
along argued that the sanctions had failed, and "regime change"
was the only alternative. As we now know Iraq did not have
weapons of mass destruction, nor was it trying to produce them.
Iran also does not have nuclear weapons yet, but Western policy
has the power to change the Iranian leadership's calculus and
make it seem like the only viable option remaining with the
power to guarantee regime survival.

In sum,
comprehensive sanctions not only killed thousands in Iraq, but
they eventually laid the path to war. One key difference in the
case of Iran is of course that one of its few lifelines to the
outside world is still China, which depends on Iranian energy to
abet its ongoing economic expansion, hardly a commendable
development for those supporting human rights and entertaining
hopes of democratisation in the Islamic Republic.

The
sanctions have arguably failed to meaningfully shift the stance
of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, who most recently emphasised that the Islamic
Republic is prepared to negotiate and has in fact never left the
negotiating table, but will not be cowed into submission. So,
if, for instance, Iran is expected to forgo 19.75 per cent
uranium enrichment and close the underground Fordow enrichment
facility, two of the P5+1's key demands at the Baghdad and
Moscow talks, there must be some form of quid pro quo. Without
one, there is no incentive for Iran to cooperate in an
atmosphere already severely afflicted by a longstanding deficit
of trust. There have been rumblings and rumours of possible
sanctions relief after the US presidential election but nothing
tangible as of yet.

There are
many voices within Iran that have called on the leadership to
find a compromise with the West. The US and its allies can make
such voices stronger and louder if they offer to lift some of
the sanctions, or at least have exceptions that allow Iran's
financial system to be involved in the import of vital goods and
products with no military or
nuclear applications, such as drugs and food stuffs.

It may be useless to preach to the Obama administration about
the human, moral, and ethical toll of its policy toward Iran,
given that the President has in many respects perpetuated the
destructive Middle East policy of George W Bush, which in Iran's
case has been even tougher and more damaging to the livelihood
of the Iranian people.

But, the
emerging catastrophe will be an ethical and moral problem
for the West for decades to come, a catastrophe that is being
created simply because Western governments appear to blindly
pursue crippling sanctions against Iran as an end in themselves,
as opposed to a means by which to further the diplomatic
process.

Given the
tragic history of the US intervention in Iran in the past, it
is be prudent to rethink the consequences of such blind
sanctions, and their effect on the thinking of the Iranian
people about the US - a largely pro-US population in one of the
most turbulent areas in the world that has been known for its
hostility towards the United States and its perceived negative
impact in much of the region.

Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles, analyses developments in
Iran for the website PBS/Frontline: Tehran Bureau.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a
former Iran researcher at the Oxford Research Group, is Editor
of Al-Monitor's Iran Pulse. He is also a fourth-year doctoral
candidate at the University of Oxford.

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